French scientists have analysed the organ, kept at RouenCathedral since the death of Richard I, known as The Lionheart;they found it was wrapped in linen, treated with mercury, herbsand reverence, and that it held pollen confirming records of hisdeath from a war wound in the spring of 1199, in central France.

What Philippe Charlier, who published his paper on Thursday,did not find in the dirty powder that is all that is left of theheart was any trace of toxin - blunting tales that the Crusaderking was hit by a poisoned crossbow bolt. Mediaeval dirt and aninfected wound most likely caused his lingering death, aged 41.

For the English, fresh from rediscovering the remains of theLionheart's 15th-century descendant, namesake and Shakespearianvillain Richard III under a municipal car park,the findings of Charlier's team may revive memories of a monarchwho lives on in popular culture as the absent but "good KingRichard" in the tales of Robin Hood.

For the French, whom Richard was fighting when he died, hisreputation as a ruthless warrior, against Muslims in the HolyLand but also in Europe, may explain the care taken to preservethe king's heart in a costly manner bound up in the mediaevalmind with the embalming of Jesus after the crucifixion.

"He had been rather criticised during the Crusade when hehad been particularly cruel," Charlier, a youthful televisioncelebrity in France, told a news conference at Versailles.

"People started to talk when he died, so very special carehad to be given to his body and especially to his heart, withherbs and spices which were not chosen by accident.

"We know from historical sources that those herbs and spiceswere used to make the time Richard the Lionheart would spend inpurgatory shorter and give him a kind of odour of sanctity.

"So this study is almost a scientific study of an artificialodour of sanctity, a man-made one," added Charlier, dubbed the"Indiana Jones of the graveyards" by French media for hishigh-profile analyses of relics and royal remains in recentyears.

NO DOUBT

Unlike some such discoveries, notably genetic testing of thebones found to belong to Richard III or Charlier's analysis of ahead which he concluded was that of Henri IV, France's greatRenaissance king, no research was conducted at Rouen todetermine whether the heart was indeed that of Richard I.

The organ was first rediscovered during work at thecathedral in the 19th century, in a lead casket dated to the12th or 13th centuries bearing the inscription in Latin: "hiciacet cor ricardi regis anglorum" - Here lies the heart ofRichard, king of the English. Its provenance was not in doubt,Charlier said, noting a prevalent practice at the time ofdividing up royal remains for burial in different sites.

Among his previous work, Charlier, 35, has found that relicsof Joan of Arc actually came from an Egyptian mummy and verifieddried blood on a handkerchief was from the guillotined Louis XVIby DNA testing to link it to other royal remains.

In their paper in "Scientific Reports" [http://r.reuters.com/xab46t], Charlier of University Hospital Raymond Poincare and his teamwrote that they found traces of linen, myrtle, daisy, mint,frankincense, creosote, mercury and possibly lime.

They had no clearly identifiable human tissue but said theembalmers themselves were not necessarily to blame - the rot mayhave been due to decay in the lead box and to damp getting in.

Whether they were successful in accelerating the process bywhich Richard entered paradise is a matter of pure speculation.

Charlier, whose Twitter account describes his "patients" as"you (soon), ... Henri IV, Richard the Lionheart, Louis XVIetc", noted in the paper that a 13th-century bishop had ruled:"Richard the Lionheart spent 33 years in Purgatory as expiationfor his sins, and ascended to Heaven only in March 1232."